The impact of GHS in the laboratory

GHS is a worldwide initiative to promote standard criteria for classifying chemicals according to their health, physical, and environmental hazards. It uses pictograms, hazard statements, and the signal words “Danger” and “Warning” to communicate hazard information on product labels and MSDS in a logical and comprehensive way.

 

The primary goal of GHS is better protection of human health and the environment by providing chemical users with enhanced and consistent information on chemical hazards. The impact to the lab will be uniform MSDS by every chemical manufacturer regardless from where the chemical was shipped. The MSDS will have 16 parts, and every vendor will have its information in the same place in each of the 16 sections.

 

The good news—you won’t have to hunt to find where the spill information is located. The bad news—although this system has been adopted in many countries, it may be a few years before it makes its way through all of the agencies involved with chemicals such as OSHA, EPA, Consumer Products, etc.